


Are the Wonders of My World

by slightly_ajar



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Multiple Points of View, Some Fluff, Team as Family, a touch of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27864254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slightly_ajar/pseuds/slightly_ajar
Summary: A mission goes wrongA fire is burningTogether the team create the story of how they made it home.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Are the Wonders of My World

“Mornin’, Leo.” 

Bozer patted the stone lion on the head. 

Damp with dew, the ornament standing at a garden gate stared impassively back at Bozer as he ran past it. 

When Bozer had become a secret agent he’d started running again. He’d left track behind without a backwards glance after High School but nothing makes a person want to build up their stamina and ability to run really, really fast like having an assassin crash through their home. After he’d joined the Phoenix Bozer had set his alarm to chime an hour earlier to fit in a run before work. The garden with the lion statue was at the mile point of his route and in the beginning getting to it had been a goal. At first Bozer couldn’t get all the way to the statue without having to walk to catch his breath but he’d soon grown stronger and fitter and the first time he’d reached the lion without having to slow his pace once he’d been elated. Now he cruised past Leo without a thought, his breathing even and legs strong, and he felt a totemic affection for the stone animal. 

A small blue sock, tiny enough to fit a baby, was lying on the wall next to the lion. Bozer guessed that it had been dropped by it’s owner, socks being notoriously tricky to keep on little wiggly feet, and had been put on the wall in the hope that someone from the baby’s family would see it. Droplets were pearling on the ribbed fabric that lay forgotten and a little sad without its owner. Bozer wondered if the sock would be there when he passed that way the next day and if anyone was searching for it, or if the baby’s parents had decided it was lost forever. 

He looked both ways before running across the road to the park at the end of the block. It was too early for children to be jumping and shrieking in the playground and for anyone to be sat on a bench with a take away coffee. The only people up and about at that time in the morning were runners and dog walkers. The dawn was still and quiet enough for Bozer to be able to hear the park’s water feature splashing and the sounds of the birds in the trees claiming their territory and crying out for mates. There were a few people who were often in the park at the same time as Bozer and he recognised some of them enough to nod to. He didn’t know any of the human’s names but he could call to a couple of the dogs and he sometimes slowed down enough to give his favourites a passing scratch behind the ear. As he ran alongside the rose gardens he spotted Hector the chocolate lab and his owner and gave them a wave. 

The little pale sock wasn’t the first lost item Bozer had spotted, abandoned and misplaced things regularly crossed his path on his runs. Plenty of what he’d seen had been the kind of possessions you’d expect to be dropped or fall out of pockets – hair clips, coins, the odd scarf – but some of the things he’d seen were more interesting than that and made him wonder. 

Bozer rounded the curve of the path as it looped around the sensory garden. The tang of herbs and roses filled the air and he could hear the buzz of bees collecting pollen from a lavender bush as his trainers padding softly on the concrete path. Some of the lost things he’d seen had made him curious about the story behind them. Abandoned shoes always gave him pause, dropping a scarf without noticing was understandable but a shoe? A single shoe? How did the owner not notice they were missing one of a pair? The teacup he’d seen by the road had been weird and the headless doll had just been creepy. Bozer hadn’t wanted to know why and how it had come to be sitting in the grass beside a bench. He’d paced past a screwdriver lying in a puddle on the long straight track at the back of the park the week before and had stared at it as he’d gone by, he couldn’t think of a reason why a screwdriver had been there, and had been so engrossed in it’s mystery that he’d taking his eyes off where he was going and had almost run into a hedge. He didn’t mind that he would never know the truth of the lost things he discovered. Not knowing kept them interesting, and it was possible that their true stories weren’t as interesting as the ones he invented. 

He wondered if anyone would ever guess the mysteries of the things left behind after a Phoenix mission, especially one Mac had been part of. The car owner who’s stolen vehicle was returned to them with a huge hole in the sunroof, the people who found a mobile phone in the branches of a tree with a balloon attached, would they ever realise what those things had done, who they had helped? Bozer suspected not. Why would they? Who would? Who in their right minds would deduce that the random cleaning products left in a hotel’s kitchen were there because they’d been used to work out what poison had killed a mob boss? That would never happen. It was ridiculous. 

Bozer felt the slight incline that led back to the street and steeled himself for the tense of his thigh muscles. It was funny how until he’d started running he’d never noticed how that path wound uphill slightly there. Sometimes you needed to experience things in a new way to find new details in them. An electronic beep rang from where he had his phone strapped to his arm. He’d foregone downloading an app that tracked his run times, heart rate and the calories he’d burnt. He’d been tempted but didn’t want his morning runs to become competitive, even though he’d only be competing with himself. He wanted them to be a moment of calm between him and his body where he just enjoyed the freedom of movement. 

There was a text from Matty. A summons. Chaos, injustice and righteous anger awaited. Or something like that. There was a mission, at least. Something bad needed to be stopped or something good needed to be started. Bozer wouldn’t know until he joined his friends in the War Room. He patted Leo the lion on the head again as he headed for home. 

  


Things go wrong. No matter how big, quick or clever you are there are times when plans go sideways. Riley was a good hacker, an excellent hacker, she’d had no reason to think that anything bad would happen when she made her deal with The Collective...and she’d ended up in jail. It makes you think, doesn’t it? 

Sometimes things go wrong quickly, like you’ve been blindsided by a truck. Sometimes you actually do get blindsided by a truck and that really puts a dent in things, literally and figuratively. Sometimes things go bad slowly. Inexorably. You see the first domino fall and a wave of ‘Oh!’, ‘No!’, ‘Shit!’ rolls forwards in slow motion without you being able to do anything to stop it. 

“I’ve just decided that this mission sucks!” 

Riley had taken the first goon down. She’d been pleased with herself for remembering the advice Desi had given her the last time they’d sparred together. Aiming her punch _past_ the bad guy in front of her not _at_ his weasely face really had made a difference. She’d seen the second goon coming for her but had known that she couldn’t turn in time to block him. They’d collided with a sickening crunch and there had been the horrible jolt of empty air, a breathless fall then shock and pain. Riley had landed on top of Bad Guy Number Two, which meant she’d won the fight, if anyone was keeping score, and rolled on her back waiting for her breathing to start again and for the pain that was everywhere to become localised so she knew which limbs to mention when her friends asked if she was hurt. 

The floor beneath her was cold, stained and rough against her skin. The ceiling above her was grey and it’s strip lighting seemed fuzzy and distant. Riley inhaled a sharp tang of chemicals and smoke and the small part of her mind that wasn’t recoiling with pain wondered if that should worry her. When she and the chuckleheaded goon had fallen from the walkway it had taken both a long time and no time at all for them to hit the ground. The fall had been slow enough for her to realise how much it was going to hurt when they crashed onto the floor and fast enough for that exact thing to happen far too quickly. Chucklehead wasn’t moving. Riley thought about reaching out to check his pulse but wasn’t sure if she could make the arm closest to him move. Now that she thought about it, a lot of her pain did seem to be radiating out from the arm that was thrown out towards her downed enemy. 

“Riles!” 

Hurried footsteps and the scrape of leather shoes skidding to a stop on concrete echoed towards Riley then Mac, Bozer and Desi were beside her, wide eyed, asking questions and making demands. 

“Are you okay? Don’t try to move yet. Does this hurt?” 

'I don’t know, okay and yes’, Riley thought. She raised the arm that didn’t hurt until someone took her hand. Strong fingers laced with hers and squeezed. Riley couldn’t tell which of her friends was holding her hand. It didn’t matter. One of them was and she clung to the caring warmth. 

“I’m all right.” Riley took as deep a breath as she could and braced herself then, letting out a slow, measured sigh she hauled herself into a sitting position. As she righted herself the pain in her arm was everywhere, stronger and larger than she was. She quailed beneath it. She would have fallen back to the floor if Bozer hadn’t caught her against his chest, supporting her until the agony had passed. Riley rested her head against Bozer’s shoulder and closed her eyes as she waited out the rush of tears and nausea. “I’ve decided that this mission sucks,” she said when she blinked her eyes clear. 

“Look at me.” Bozer waggled a finger in front of his eyes. “Right here into my baby browns.” He stared into Riley’s face, searching for signs of a concussion and Riley was tempted to go cross eyed to throw him off but the idea made her head hurt and she found she did want the reassurance of being told she didn’t have a head injury. 

“You’re fine.” Bozer gave her the twinkling look he used when he wanted to be dashing. “Any one you walk away from is a win, right?” 

“I’m doing better than him,” Riley said, tapping the man she’d landed on with the side of her boot. The rise and fall of his breaths were the only movement he was making, his eyes were resolutely closed. “And him.” She pointed upwards with her good arm. 

Mac, Bozer and Desi looked up to see one of Goon Number One’s feet hanging over the edge of the platform above them. 

“Nice work!” Desi grinned. “A two for one.” 

Mac folded the length of fabric he had just cut from somewhere – of course he’d found something he could make use of – into a shape that look like a sling. He held it out to Riley. 

“That arm needs stabilising. I’ll be as gentle as I can.” 

He was. For someone who was a big, lanky, nerdy, goofball Mac could be incredibly precise and thoughtful. He would never have walked away from all of those bombs if he couldn’t. There was no one Riley trusted more to create a complicated way out of a dangerous situation than him and there was no one she trusted less to get through a twenty four hour period without making some kind of dorky move. It was a MacGyver paradox. A Mac-adox. A Schrodinger’s Mac. 

Desi frowned as she looked over her shoulder. “We need to go.” 

The expression Mac made when he followed Desi’s gaze was his ‘this is serious for reasons that aren’t good’ look. Not his ‘I don’t know the answer and I don’t like it’ face or the arrangement of his features that said, ‘I’m experiencing an emotion I don’t have a healthy coping strategy for’, it was his ‘imminent danger’ face. Riley knew she needed to move. 

“Then let’s go.” Riley gritted her teeth and pulled herself up off the floor. As she rose her bruises shouted to make themselves known and her ribs had plenty to say on the subject of her standing. She cried out, swayed sideways and grabbed fists full of Desi’s jacket, locking her knees to keep her legs from buckling. The solidity of Desi’s arm slipped around her and Riley leaned further into the support than she would have liked. She didn’t want to be a burden. What she did want was to find somewhere soft to rest and a warm blanket to wrap around herself but the smell of smoke she’d noticed before was growing stronger and she could hear the crackle and hiss of fire. 

Bozer blanched. “Guys...” 

Mac’s jaw tensed. 

Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes they can be fixed quickly with duct tape or an apology. Time, space and reflection can help things heal in the longer term. Sometimes fixing things takes a second chance, patience and for someone to believe in you. The Phoenix had believed in Riley when she’d been in the lowest place of her life and now she had a family and a job she loved. She’d given Elwood another chance and had been willing to accept that he could change. Things between them had been going well, she wouldn’t say that what had been broken was fixed, maybe it never completely could be, but the pieces of what Elwood had let shatter were being used to create something new. Creation was hopeful. And hope was life, right? Riley didn’t think that was how the quote actually went but she was in too much pain to remember how it was supposed to go. 

“Can you walk?” Desi asked. 

“I think so.” 

“Quickly?” 

“Now seems like a good time to find out.” 

The dominos that had started to tumble when Goon One and Goon Two charged Riley had set off a chain of events that had led to smoke and flames heading her way. Or maybe the spark of the fire had been lit before she’d heard footsteps clanging on the metal walkway. Either way the danger was real and heading towards Riley and her friends. 

“Let’s go.” 

Desi tightened her hold on Riley and they started to run. 

  


Desi hadn’t taken her own advice. 

If anyone asked her – and people had – how to be efficient, how to protect, defend, get your people back safely from a mission, Desi would have told them to allow a bit of distance to remain between you and your team. Hold yourself back from them, just a little, just enough so there was a sliver of empty air between you and them. 

If you wanted to keep your people safe, if you cared about them, the best thing to do was to not care about them too much. Becoming too bound up with others left you, and more importantly them, vulnerable. Love could be compromising. Love could blind. And clear eyesight is vital when lining up a shot. Without that gap between you and your people the invisible lines that bind you to them will pull at you and distract you from making rational decisions. You’ll react rather than respond. You might not get it right. And they might not come home. 

Desi learned to keep her distance from others when she was a child. She’d learned that when she was too young to properly understand or articulate it. Back then she couldn’t have explained how she knew she was different from Tammy, Debbie and Marie at Kindergarten but she knew she was. And she knew her differences weren’t ones that could be changed. She knew she was different from those others in her fundamental parts, in the ingredients that made up the pieces that made up the building blocks of her. She could pretend to enjoy what they enjoyed and dress the way they dressed but she would never be like them. So Desi learned to stay a step away, to not try and click with anyone because feeling the distance between herself and others was better than feeling the concussive jar of them not connecting. 

But she’d failed to take her own advice. She’d let tendrils of connection grow and reach like ivy and wrap around the people in her life without her knowing it. 

She could have said no when Jack asked her for a favour. She owed him but she could have said no to his question and promised to help him another time. She could have told him about how this appointment or that assignment meant she couldn’t become part of the Phoenix, but she hadn’t. Jack had asked and it had sounded important to him, and since he was important to her she said yes. 

Desi could have kept her distance from the Phoenix team, not sat and drank beer with them around the fire pit on Mac and Bozer’s deck and not joined in with their banter but she had, and before she’d known what was happening she cared. There was no space between them, no room left for her to pull back before they pushed. She was bound to them. 

It kind of sucked. But it was also kind of wonderful. And Desi was furious at herself for being so happy. 

So when Riley’s eyes were full of sorrowful, searching wistfulness after Billy left Desi brought her a couple of bottles of Merlot and got them both wine drunk. They’d laughed and cried together until way after midnight, singing Adele songs with fervour and one hand thrown in the air. And the day after Charlie’s funeral Desi bought a broken carriage clock from a garage sale, bundled it up in a cardboard box and handed it to a desolate, restless Mac asking if he could fix it. (He did. It chimed on the hour. Desi had a feeling it hadn’t done that before.) 

Her lungs and thighs were burning as she ran with flames chasing her and with Riley tucked against her side. Riley’s teeth were gritted and sweat was rolling down her face, she didn’t want to slow them down and the pace was costing her. 

“Riley,” Desi said, “hold on, we can-”

“No, I can do this,” Riley swiped at the sweat in her eyes. “I can do this.” 

“I know you can, but maybe you don’t have to.” Desi pulled Riley behind a stack of crates with Bozer and Mac beside her. “Catch your breath,” she said, lowering them to a crouch under the smoke thickening in the air. Riley dropped, exhausted, coughing and wheezing. On the day Desi had met the team she’d ended up in a fire with them and here they were again. If she believed in fate she might be tempted to think they were destined to come together in flames. She’d heard of baptisms of fire but this was just insulting. Desi couldn’t see an exit, either a clearly marked fire escape, an unlocked window or even a boarded off service hatch that she could kick through. She would have been happy to spot a fire extinguisher but there was nothing. The gang that owned the building had seriously lax health and safety procedures, if she made it out of there Desi was going to insist that violating fire codes was added to their list of charges. 

An objective observer might suggest that Desi should leave the team in their hiding place and try to make her own way through the flames to find an exit; that on her own she could find a way out of the fire and call for help. But any pragmatism Desi had was lost underneath the knowledge that she would not leave anyone behind. Desi didn’t think there was a tactical advantage in going on alone, she and her friends would need each other if they were going to get through the day, but even if there had been Desi didn’t think she would have done it. 

A rending, tearing sound of tortured metal cut through the roar of the flames and a column standing near where the team were sheltering buckled and crashed to the ground, sending up a cloud of embers and heat. 

Desi, Riley, Bozer and Mac shared a look of finality. 

  


Matty didn’t have children. She never would have children. That wasn’t how things had worked out. And that was fine. 

No, really, that was fine. Anyone who pulled their mouth down into a patronising frown, tilted their head and told her, “don’t worry, there’s still plenty of time,” would get a short, very sharp reply. 

Matty was comfortable with the decisions she’d made and the life she’d built for herself. 

Her team were not her children, she was certainly not their mother, but they had a bond, they shared love that wasn’t built on a foundation of DNA and the same last name. 

When Mac had been handcuffed and vulnerable in a police station with an assassin coming for him what had roared to life inside Matty’s breast could only be called maternal and she, protocol be damned, sent a Tac team into the precinct to get their boy back. When Elwood had reappeared in Riley’s life Matty had stood waiting in his frankly unsanitary hotel room to warn him that he would not get to hurt her. In any way. She would make sure of it. 

She’d put every single protocol that she could think of in place to protect Jack when he’d left and before Desi came she ran each background check she could before she let her anywhere near her agents. 

Matty didn’t have children but she did have a family. 

And she knew blood had been spilled. She knew a fire was burning. And if someone didn’t get the coms working and get her agents out of that building so help her she would tear the world apart. 

“I said report!” Matty demanded. Desperation can make people powerful, not unlike in those urban myths were someone is able to lift up a car to save a person trapped underneath it. Not that Matty wasn’t already powerful. She knew she was. She knew her orders would be followed but right then she needed them to be followed immediately, with focused intent and the knowledge that if they weren’t completed to her intense satisfaction she would want to know why. “Somebody get me conformation of their last message! Are they still inside or not?” 

If the agent she was speaking to was thinking anything about mama bears he was wise enough to keep it to himself. 

“Yes, Miss Webber.” 

“And get an emergency exfil team and the fire department to their location five minutes ago. Are the medical team prepped?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

She’d let Ethan go. He’d gone undercover with S Company with both of them understanding what that could mean. That was the job. Both of their jobs. She wouldn’t have been given guardianship of the Phoenix without knowing the barriers the role asked a leader to put around their heart. Those walls were still there. She hadn’t changed. But that didn’t mean she didn’t care or that she wouldn’t move heaven and earth to protect her family when she could. 

“Where’s the satellite image?” Matty asked. 

The agent didn’t bother replying, he knew a verbal answer wasn’t what Matty wanted. He tapped at the tablet in his hand and a picture appeared on the display. It took all her years of discipline for Matty to not step back away from the image on the screen. The picture in front of her was half obscured by thick black smoke as it boiled from the building she’d sent her team to. There didn’t seem to be any part of the warehouse that wasn’t burning, orange and red flames poured from it’s windows and licked along it’s roof. 

Matty knew that if you grit your teeth and lift your chin you can equal the glare of directors and dictators and meet their steely stares with your own. A raised eyebrow and a snappy comeback didn’t hurt either. But narrowing her eyes and pulling out a titbit of information that she’d filed away for future use wouldn’t do anything for her people. Matty the Hun couldn’t command the elements or make the teams she’d sent to rescue her trapped friends move any faster. She’d done all that she could and now she had to sit and wait. Matty didn’t have a husband and children but she had a family, and there was a possibility that she would have to watch as they were lost. 

“Do you have any more orders, Ma’am?” 

“Give me the room,” Matty didn’t look away from the screen. “Please.” 

  


There were often people running in the Phoenix headquarters. Orders deploying Tac teams, warnings to agents that their jets wheels would be going up in twenty and the occasional game of laser tag regularly had people rushing through the hallways. Russ was used to it. He rather enjoyed watching people sprint past him, he’d made a game out of trying to guess what they were doing by reading them as they hurtled by. He’d christened the game Watch and Go, it was a fun little challenge that helped keep his skills honed. He focused on the expression on the face of the woman hurrying around the corner near him and saw gravity and concern. Something was happening, something not good. Russ walked in the direction the woman had come from and saw more expressions like hers. People were worried and not about anything external, whatever was putting tension lines on everyone’s foreheads was personal. It was happening to the Phoenix, to people from the Phoenix and whatever it was it was serious. Russ started to run. 

He had punched a wall once. Just once. Right after his friends had died, after his friends had been murdered by Codex, he’d taken his fury out on the bricks of his living room wall and had felt better for about five seconds until the pain and the pointlessness had hit him. The futility of the hole in the plastering had hurt more than the broken skin of his knuckles. 

It hadn’t made him feel any better, that fist shaped dent next to the painting the Head of MI5 had given him. It hadn’t got his brothers back and it hadn’t stopped Codex - it hadn’t slowed them down one iota. They didn’t care that he was stood in his living room with a bleeding hand and tears dripping onto the stained jumper he’d been wearing since he’d received the message about the crash. 

So Russ would make Codex care. He would sober up, have a shower, change into the armour of a freshly tailored shirt and waistcoat and find a way to make them care. 

Obsession was an ugly word. Fixation was better but not much. But if someone had wanted to say either of those things about Russ he wouldn’t have minded. He probably wouldn’t have noticed. He searched and connected the dots and found the Phoenix Foundation. Or he found the ashes of the foundation which was so much better. It was almost poetry. The temptation to be the one who lit the spark that helped resurrect a phoenix was too good to miss, it would have appealed to his melodramatic side even without everything that he was trying to achieve. 

Russ could talk with the best of them. He could obfuscate, wheedle and charm to meet his goals but when he burst into the War Room he got straight to the point. 

“Matty, what’s happening?” 

“A fire,” Matty said simply. “They’re still inside.” 

Russ had found good people at the Phoenix. And he wanted to be a good person. No, he really did. Not just for the positive press or a handy soundbite to draw attention away from the more questionable side of his business. Finding yourself still alive when you shouldn’t be was sobering. Russ had lost his friends, he’d lost so much that he’d stopped and wondered what it was that he actually still had and when he’d taken stock of what his years on Earth had amassed he wasn’t pleased with his findings. Money was wonderful, being rich was lovely, thank you very much, but he was alone in his big house with no one to give him a hard time about how badly his football team had played at the weekend, and all the bank accounts with lines of zero’s next to his (assumed) names felt hollow. Where was the fun in a bottle of expensive whiskey if you didn’t have anyone to drink it with you? 

So, to the Phoenix. 

And the people there were as good as he’d been led to believe. Good at what they did and just good. And, dammit, kind and oddly charming. He liked them. And worse than that he wanted them to like him. He cared again. He hadn’t gone looking to make a new family to ease the ache left by the one he’d lost but he had found one. 

Being good felt good and being happy again was a relief. He had given up on joy and was pleasantly surprised to find he was still capable of feeling it. 

“What’s being done?” 

“Exfil and the fire department are on their way.” 

“And our people?” 

Micro-expressions chased across Matty’s face in the pause she left before answering that question; fear, worry, regret and pain were all there in the look she gave him. Russ saw hope and resignation flick, flick, flick in turns in her eyes. 

“During the last contact we had with the team currently deployed at that location it was confirmed that they had breached the perimeter of the building.” The parlance of officialdom was useful for communicating with the higher ups in organisations who’d forgotten how real people talk to each other, for speaking without saying anything at all and for hiding how you really felt. Matty was a pro at it. “My hope at this time is that they’re using their skills to facilitate an escape.” 

The screen was still filled with the image of dark smoke and searing flames. If anyone could survive and escape an inferno like that it was Mac and the others. 

“Mine too” 

  


“Well,” thought Mac. And then he thought a long stream of swear words. He’d picked up some good ones in the army and he could swear in Spanish and in German. And in Pashto, come to think of it. He knew a few curse words in American Sign Language too that he would have thrown in if his hands hadn’t been busy. 

Mac really liked missions when everything went smoothly. There was nothing more satisfying than gliding in and out of an op, cool and slick as ice, with no trace left behind but the good that had been done. The feeling of being in the sweet spot of a mission, when everything was flowing and each beat was being hit, was priceless. It couldn’t be bought or faked. Mac didn’t expect every mission to be that way, that would be unrealistic and would get boring eventually, but it would be nice for it to happen more often. 

Fire was wild and unpredictable. It had so many variables. Mac didn’t know what accelerant had been used to start the one he was surrounded by but whatever it had been it was potent. The flames had caught quickly and were rushing through the building with frightening speed. Heat was searing his skin and was growing closer and closer with no means on hand to stop it. 

“Mac,” Bozer asked urgently, looking around the corner of the building the team were crouching in “Is there anything you can use to, you know?” 

Mac stood up and scanned the area, cringing back from the heat and searching for anything he could use to help his friends. There was nothing. Nothing large or small that he could strip down and put together. Mac couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been able to look at something, mentally break it down into it’s constituent parts and imagine them as something else. That was what he did. He made things that were the sum of other thing’s parts. Things were easy to dissect and divine what made them tick, people however? Mac still didn’t have the hang of that. 

He dropped down to crouch with his friends and shook his head. 

“Okay.” Bozer nodded slowly, stoic and trying to be strong. “Okay, we’ll think of something else.” 

Mac still didn’t know why Bozer had decided to defend him against Donnie the Bully all those years ago. Whenever he asked about it Bozer just said that he did it because it was the right thing to do. ‘I don’t like bullies’, he’d shrug, ‘It’s not right for people to treat anyone like they’re worth less than them because of some judgement they’ve made’, his eyes would become shuttered for an instant, his expression carefully blank, then he’d shake himself and brightly change the subject. A Venn diagram of shared interests and experiences could be used to explain why Mac and Bozer had become and stayed friends for so many years but their bond went beyond a mutual love of Star Wars and monster movies. They just fitted together, complementary and balanced. They worked. 

Mac felt sure that if he’d known Riley or Desi in high school they would have been too cool to talk to him. Distance from the polarising force of teenage cliques had smoothed out the rough edges that would have caused friction between them then and now they all fitted together like clockwork, like the interlaced fingers of clasped hands. 

“Is there anything on the coms?” Riley asked. She was pale, her expression tight with pain, sweat dampening her hair. 

“They’re fried,” Mac said. “That was maybe a bad choice of words,” he added when Riley blinked slowly at him. “I have an idea though.” 

The smoke in the air was thick and impenetrable. This was definitely not one of the cool as ice missions where the team slid without resistance to a happy ending. This mission needed something messy and desperate. 

Mac pulled his phone and his Swiss Army Knife out of his pocket and asked Desi for a bullet from her gun. When she silently handed one over he pulled it open and tipped the gun powder into his hand. 

“You’re going to throw something that goes boom at a fire?” Desi asked. 

“Have you ever heard the story of the poor man who got lost in the woods?” Mac asked. 

“Did he have a suicidal compulsion to blow things up too?” 

“No,” Mac shook his head. “Bear with me, this story does have a point.” Mac eased the back of his phone open with his knife. “So, there was once a poor man who had to travel from his home to another town. The man was really poor, too poor to even afford a prayer book, so he didn’t have a horse and he had to trek there on foot.” Mac’s friends were looking at him with the expectant and uncomprehending expressions he was used to seeing while he was building something. 

“Why did the man have to go to the other town?” Bozer asked, “Was it to make some money and buy a prayer book?” 

“The reason he was travelling isn’t important, Boze,” Mac said, digging into the circuits of his phone. “The journey was a long one through a forest and the poor man was still walking when night started to fall. The moon was behind clouds that night so the forest was only lit by the faint glow of the stars and the man soon became lost and scared. He wanted to pray for protection and guidance but because he didn’t have a prayer book he didn’t know what to say so he called up to God, ‘I don’t know what prayer to use to ask for what I need but you do, so I’m going to recite the alphabet and then you can make the right words from that.’” Mac held up the device he’d just built. “This is me reciting the alphabet.” 

Mac could build things with pieces that interacted with finely tuned precision and that was always satisfying, but it was also satisfying to make something that reacted on an elemental level. Creating a set of LED bulbs was fun but creating the spark that made light had it’s own rush. 

Bozer pointed to the gadget in Mac’s hand. “So that’s like a Hail Mary Pass but with science?” 

Mac hummed, “I can’t disagree with that. Look,” he added, “we don’t have to do this, we can wait to see if exfill gets here in time or...?” 

“No, let’s do it.” 

The team huddled together, nerdy boys and cool girls managing to all be both folded under and covering over each other somehow. Slotting together like a family. 

“Okay,” Mac said, raising the hand that held his device, “here we go.” 

  


“What’s up, buddy?” 

The stone lion was just where Bozer knew it would be but the little blue sock was gone. Bozer hoped it had found it’s way home but he would never know. He’d have to make up the end of that story himself. 

The air was cool and sweet as Bozer ran through the streets near his home and not just because of the early hour or the faint hint of autumn in the air. He was alive. They all were. Riley’s arm was in a cast and a sling – a real one, not one fashioned from something Mac had found lying around – and her doctor had given her pain killers but she was okay. 

The building they’d been trapped inside was gone, destroyed by flames, and Bozer wondered if anyone looking at the piles of ash would be able to tell what had really happened there. He doubted it. No one would ever guess the real truth. Studying the scorch marks on the ground, the charred metal ruins and the depressions in the grass near where the building used to be probably wouldn’t explain why the fire had burned with an explosion of heat in one corner or reveal the prompt care of the exfil crew who had quickly bundled the team into a Phoenix chopper and off to safety. The people who needed to knew the true story and that was enough. 

What had happened had taught Bozer things he wished he didn’t know – how close they’d been to disaster, how Riley went quiet and hunched when she was in pain – but some of what he’d come to understand - how committed they all were to each other, the one for all and all for one mentality they stepped into when things got tough? He’d never be sorry he’d learned that. He’d always known it really but to witness it in real time and feel the stalwart certainty anchoring his friends together made everything worthwhile. 

Bozer saw Hector the dog and his owner walking along the path that led to the large oak in the centre of the park and raised his hand in a greeting. 

“Good morning,” Hector’s owner called, “How are you?” 

Bozer smiled and answered with sincerity, “I’m good.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The quote Riley misremembers is ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope’.
> 
> The story title comes from the Adele song Hometown Glory. The reason the title is comes from Adele lyrics is that I was thinking about what songs Riley and Desi would sing during their Billy Sucks drinking session. I think they would definitely have shouted along with Send My Love to Your New Lover, Someone Like You and Rolling in the Deep but they could have also had go at Hometown Glory.


End file.
